


Morse Code Explanation

by readymachine



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Survivor Guilt, The Ark Station, alternate season 5, spacekru
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:21:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24338830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readymachine/pseuds/readymachine
Summary: Bellamy misses fresh air. He misses the soft chirping of birds in the morning. He misses the taste of boar meat straight out of the fire, the sweet smell of afternoon rain, the golden shine of the endless sky as the sun drifts gently below the horizon. He misses the Earth he fell in love with before it became the churning, violent red planet 200,000 miles beneath him.But mostly, he misses Clarke.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Bellamy Blake/Raven Reyes, Emori/John Murphy (The 100), Monty Green/Harper McIntyre
Comments: 13
Kudos: 93





	Morse Code Explanation

**Day 14.**

Bellamy misses fresh air. He misses the soft chirping of birds in the morning. He misses the taste of boar meat straight out of the fire, the sweet smell of afternoon rain, the golden shine of the endless sky as the sun drifts gently below the horizon. He misses the Earth he fell in love with before it became the churning, violent red planet 200,000 miles beneath him.

But mostly, he misses Clarke.

If he closes his eyes and focuses really hard, he thinks he can feel her next to him. Some kind of warm radiance just over his shoulder, whispering to him to use his head, use his head, _use his_ _head_. Maybe it’s her ghost, following him into space. It would be just like Clarke to haunt him here among the stars...

Except Bellamy has seen enough death to know not to believe in ghosts. Clarke is not here, because he left her behind. He used his head and left her behind and now he’s got to live.

“Hold the damn light steady, Blake,” Raven growls from beside his feet. Her upper half is shoved under a communications console in the Earth Monitoring Station, a loose pile of tools on the floor beside her hip. Bellamy considers a witty comeback, decides he’s too tired to argue, readjusts the light. Raven grunts in thanks. Or maybe she just coughs. The oxygen scrubber is still working to circulate air through the old vents and everyone’s lungs are still adjusting—or, for most of them, readjusting—to life in space.

“If this works, we’ll be able to talk to the bunker?” Bellamy asks. His heart twinges at the thought of talking to Octavia again. Of at least knowing that he _could_ , if he wanted to. And also...he has to tell Abby that Clarke…

Anyway, she has to know.

“ _Hypothetically_ ,” Raven sighs. “Unless the wires are shot, or the dishes aren’t aligned properly, or if the outside panels were damaged when the stations disengaged, or…”

There’s a sudden _whoosh_ and an electric buzz as the console blinks to life. The screens against the wall start to flicker on one-by-one.

“Good job, Reyes,” Bellamy breathes out a laugh. He moves his head just a fraction to the left. Just enough to expect a halo of golden hair to be there. Just enough to hurt.

Raven slides out from under the console, hauling herself up to her feet, a 100-watt smile on her face. She looks down at the control bank and starts pressing buttons, a whir of fingers and brilliance.

“Now we just have to establish contact with the satellites and—”

The screens flash from black to white and off again. Raven looks up with a frown.

“Well, that’s weird,” she mutters.

“What?” Bellamy asks.

“The screens aren’t connected to the console. They shouldn’t be connected to _anything_.”

The screens flick to white again, one-by-one across the wall.

“Then how are they doing _that_?”

The screens pulse, the lights flickering wildly across the LEDs before there’s suddenly gray static sprayed across them all. Behind the fuzz, a dark lamniscate solidifies into view.

“No,” Raven whispers. “ _No._ Not _here_.”

“ _Raven_ ,” A melodic voice crackles over the loudspeaker. “ _It’s good to see you again._ ”

Raven reaches under the console, grabs a fistful of wires, and yanks them out with a snarl. The screens blink off at once as the lights on the communications console blink out.

“Was that—?” Bellamy asks wearily, already knowing the answer.

“ _A.L.I.E_ .”  
  


**Day 16.**

“But how the hell is she _here_?”

(Because _of course_ she is.)

“I already _told_ you, Murphy, she uploaded her code into the Ring before Clarke pulled the kill switch.”

(There’s a twinge in his chest at her name that feels like a dirty finger in an open wound.)

“But doesn’t _kill switch_ mean she should have been _killed_?”

( _Of course not_.)

“Not necessarily. If her code got here before the kill switch was activated, then hypothetically she could have stored a piece of herself here in—in hibernation when the rest of her was shut down.”

“And we poked the damn bear,” Bellamy sighs, passing a hand over his face.

“What does this mean?” Echo whispers from the corner. She still has the wide-eyed, terrified look she’s had for two weeks now. Like a lost child, surrounded by unfamiliar metal walls. 

_Grounders in space_.

(The finger digs deeper.)

Raven shrugs, but her eyes are flicking back and forth. She’s searching for solutions.

“We have to wipe her from the mainframe, somehow,” she mutters. “Build a _new_ killswitch.”

“If she downloaded herself into the mainframe, it’s only accessible from the Chancellor’s office,” Monty says from his spot on the floor. He’s fiddling with the ends of his bandages. His radiation burns were mostly healed, but there were a few spots that were still causing him issues. Bellamy can see the spots of blood coming through the gauze and he makes a note to raid Medical and get more.

“So let’s go to this Chancellor’s office,” Emori says.

“We can’t,” Monty responds, a fatigued tic to his tone. “It’s in Quadrant 4. Quadrant 4 is inaccessible.”

“Then _make_ it accessible.”

“It’s not that _simple_ ,” Monty sighs. “When the stations were separated from the Ring, they caused _massive damage_. Entire hallways were obliterated. They’re just hanging out into open space.”

“Can you spacewalk?” Bellamy asks Raven.

“Not that _simple_ ,” She parrots. “The oxygen is running on minimum capacity as it is. There’s no way to know if the oxygen is working over there and no way of transporting more than five minutes worth of air in the suit. Besides that, there’s no propulsion in place to get over the divide. Hell, we don’t even know how much of Quadrant 4 is _left_.”

“Well, clearly there’s _some_ power left over there,” Harper says.

“She’s got a point,” Monty says. “If ALIE is active over _here_ it means she still has access to her core code over _there_.”

“But there still might not be oxygen.”

“There’s no way to check?” Bellamy asks.

“Sensor readouts are patched in through the system. No way to activate the system without A.L.I.E. knowing, and if she’s in the code she’ll have access to all of the automated systems. She’d be able to open the airlocks, shut off the water recycler—”

“Or the oxygen?”

“Exactly.”

Bellamy crosses his arms over his chest and closes his eyes. His heart is telling him to find a way across, to climb in the damn suit himself if he needs to and walk across space to purge A.L.I.E. once and for all. Then maybe the others could talk to the bunker. Maybe then they could tell Abby.

But he feels her ghost at his side, firmly telling him _no_. 

“We’ll just have to wait, then,” he says, finally. “If we can’t go over safely, we can’t go over at all.”

“But Octavia…” Harper looks at him with a creased brow. He thinks of his sister, buried deep underneath the ruined earth with the heavy mantle of leadership slung over her shoulders. Does she feel lost? Is she frightened? Does she miss him?

He blinks quickly.

“Octavia will be fine.” He tries a smile, feels like he manages it. “She’s tough, and she’s smart. And she probably wouldn’t listen to a word I say, even if we could find a way to talk to her.”

They all smile, thinking of the friends they had left behind. _Their_ _people_. 

“Let’s just focus on getting the algae farm up and running. Then we can see about finding a way to transport oxygen.”

He wonders if Clarke would be proud of him. 

He hopes so.  
  


**Day 23.**

Bellamy bites down on the end of his flashlight, trying to hold the beam of light steady. He has an open sack in his hands and he’s shoveling their limited amount of gauze into it while searching the medbay shelves for more burn cream. Monty’s hands had finally healed, but there had been an electrical mishap in the communications room with Emori that had left her with minor burns across her forearm. She had given them all a scare, but had recovered quickly and seemed to be more embarrassed than anything.

They were lucky, _really_ lucky, that the medbay had survived entirely intact when the Ark was torn apart. Most of the essential supplies had been taken down with the stations, but they hadn’t been able to take everything, which Bellamy can’t help but be thankful for. Still, everything was left in such disarray during the quick evacuation that he’s not even sure where to keep looking. He’s been digging around for almost half an hour with not much luck.

There’s a desk in the corner, the surface scattered with papers. He might as well search there. He crosses over, taking the flashlight in his hand as he pulls open the top drawer and scans the contents. Blank forms, loose pencils, two leftover rations for the commissary. The second drawer yields a baseball (which he also shoves in the bag because God knows they need more entertainment), and a voice recorder that he sets on top of the desk. Finally, he opens the last drawer and finds—Abby. A perfect drawing of Abby. She’s sitting at the same desk, her eyes tired yet kind. Bellamy’s heart swells fiercely in his chest when he spots the signature scrawled in the bottom right.

 _Don’t work so hard_ _— Love, Clarke_

He knew that Clarke had helped her mother in the medbay, but somehow it hadn’t connected in his brain. Now, he can almost see her standing in front of him with her hair in a tight braid and that furrow between her eyebrows. The image is so overpowering that Bellamy falls to his knees.

_Love, Clarke_

He plucks the drawing out of the drawer with shaking hands and finds another one beneath it. He recognizes Wells’s profile in sweeping lines of lead and an unfinished sketch of his hands. Bellamy finds a dozen in total. A few more of Wells, one of a man with shaggy hair who Bellamy recognizes as Jake Griffin, and shoved in the very back he finds a crumpled paper ball. He unfurls it, smoothing the edges out on his thigh, and he feels like he knows who he’ll find on the page before he straightens it out. Her eyes are a little too far apart, the ears a little too big, but she got the curve of her mouth and the shaded edge of her chin just right. The self-portrait is only half-finished, her hair a simple sketch around a finished face, but it’s unmistakably _Clarke_.

Was this her desk? Did she draw these while sitting here under the sharp fluorescents? He didn’t even know she could draw. He didn’t know a lot of things about Clarke Griffin. There was always something in the way: the war, the distance, the apocalypse. He thought he’d have time. He thought _they’d_ have time.

He sets the portraits reverently on the desktop and sees the voice recorder. Could he be so lucky? So unlucky? He presses play.

_“—herniated disc, hairline fracture of the left tibia, and we’ve capped out on morphine.”_

_Abby_. It’s just Abby. Bellamy isn’t sure whether he’s relieved or disappointed.

 _“When I think of all the good that could be done without these limitations, I can’t help but feel envious of the doctors before the war. If only they had understood the_ freedom _they had, the_ resources _. The lives I could save if I could use just one more liter of blood, just one more dose of antibiotics—_

_“Mom?”_

And there she is.

Bellamy is crying now, his palm pressed tightly against his mouth to keep in the sobs crawling up his throat.

“ _Mom, you should come to bed. You can finish in the morning._

“ _I’m almost done, Clarke. You go ahead._

“ _You’ve got to take care of yourself, too. You have people who rely on you. They would want you to be at your best._ ”

Abby chuckles as the recording stops.

Bellamy breathes in deep and holds it. He wipes his face, but he can’t stop the tears from spilling out of his eyes. He misses her so much. _So fucking much_. The girl with the golden hair who wouldn’t take his shit and never let him doubt himself. She should be here with them. She should have made it back in time. He shouldn’t have left her, but he did and now he has to live with it.

“Bellamy?”

Bellamy tenses up, his back to the door. It’s Echo, come looking for him.

“Leave,” Bellamy says, his voice gravelly. He does not turn around.

“I just thought you might need help.”

“ ** _GET. OUT._** ”

She leaves as quietly as she came and Bellamy can’t help but feel relieved.

 _It should be Clarke here_ , a sinister voice rings through his brain. _Not_ her.

Bellamy waits twenty minutes before he folds the pictures and puts them in his pockets along with the voice recorder. He wipes his face a final time and clears his throat before leaving.

He never finds the burn cream and Echo doesn’t talk to him for a week.

**Day 34**.

“Do we know if it’s safe?”

Bellamy tentatively sniffs the cup of green swill he holds in his hand and forces back a gag. It smells vaguely like rot.

“Well, no,” Monty responds, twisting his hands on the end of his apron. He’s still got scars streaking across the skin on the back of his hands. “It’s the first batch. We’ve got to learn by doing.”

“Well the doing’s got to get done fast,” Raven says, suspiciously eyeing the cup set on the table in front of her. “We’re down to limited rations.”

Bellamy’s stomach growls as if in response.

“I’ll try it first, of course _—_ ” Monty starts.

“No,” Bellamy interrupts. “You’re the only one who knows anything about making this stuff. If it’s poisonous, we can’t afford to lose you. _I’ll_ try it.”

He grimaces down at the mixture.

“No, really, I made it, I should _—_ ”

“Stop, Monty, you’re too _—_ ”

“No, no, really _—_ ”

“Oh, my God,” Murphy sighs dramatically from the corner, pushing off from his silent spot against the wall. “ _I’ll_ do it.”

He tips his own cup back and swallows the contents in one gulp. Everyone in the room freezes.

Murphy frowns.

“Well, that tastes like shhhhhi _—_ ”

His jaw stops working halfway through the word and his eyes slide upwards into his skull.

“John?” Emori shoots up, taking a few steps towards him.

Murphy’s knees give way and he crashes to the floor, his head cracking sickeningly on the metal ground. He starts convulsing, green foam forming at the corners of his mouth.The cords of his neck strain against his skin, his face beginning to flood a deep red.

“John!” Emori takes him by the shoulders and tries to hold him down to stop the seizing while everyone crowds around to try and help.

“Roll him over onto his side!” Bellamy shouts. Monty and Emori comply, helping to haul him over.

 _What would Clarke do?_ He thinks, his mind racing, trying to remember all the times he watched Clarke take care of someone. He took it for granted, then. He thought she would always be around to help.

Murphy vomits green sludge and his seizing stills. His eyes gently close as his limbs go slack.

“I’m so sorry!” Monty gasps, his hands hovering wildly over Murphy like he’s scared he’ll injure him further. “I didn’t know!”

“You’ll have to do better next time,” Bellamy says. “Can you help me get him to Medical? Maybe we can find something there to help him.”

Monty nods vigorously and takes Murphy by the ankles while Bellamy heaves him up by his armpits. Murphy’s head lolls down onto his sick-stained chest. Emori follows beside them, worriedly wringing her hands.

“He’s going to be okay, isn’t he?” She asks. Bellamy looks up at Monty and catches his gaze. Monty’s lips are drawn in a thin line. He picks his shoulders up slightly, a silent _I don’t know_.

“He’ll be fine,” Bellamy says tightly, hoping against hope he’s not lying.  
  


**Day 41.**

Murphy wakes up coughing green goo, but after a cup of water and a few choice swears he seems back to normal. Bellamy feels a weight lift off his chest and Monty looks like he can finally breathe.

“Come on, Blake, you know you can’t kill a cockroach,” Murphy rasps. Emori buries her face into his neck and Bellamy is suddenly heartsick in a way that takes him off guard. 

“Yeah, I should’ve known better,” He responds, his throat dry. Sometimes when he looks at Murphy he sees the kid on the ground with the lazy expression on his face and something to prove. Sometimes he sees a spurt of blood and a noose and the totality of bad decisions. But here, seeing him slumped against Emori with his sense of humor still intact and his fingers wrapped tightly around her waist, he sees something that feels like _family_.

He wonders how Octavia is doing.

He hopes she thinks of him as well.  
  


**Day 64.**

Monty finally mixes an edible, soupy concoction. It tastes awful, but they all eat two bowls each anyway.  
  


**Day 84.**

Time passes differently in space. Some days seem to stretch for weeks, some hours for minutes. Sometimes Bellamy wakes up in his cot and for the moment before he opens his eyes he swears he’s 16 again. Once he even reached down to knock on the floor panels and wake Octavia up before he remembered that she's too far down to hear him.

His original quarters were in Factory Station, which had long since fallen and shattered during the exodus to Earth. He had never had much of anything on the Ark, so there wasn’t much of anything to mourn in losing. Still, he wishes now that he had something tangible to hold on to. Like Octavia’s old doll, stitched from the spare cloth that their mother could get her hands on, or the precious silver thimble that lived on their dining table, the surface shining from a hundred years of use. But those things are all gone now. He had to let them go.

One night (or day? it's hard to keep track) he finds Raven in the hallway staring at the thick metal door that once led to Mecha station. She’s got her metal raven turning over between her fingers, her eyes far away.

“You okay?” Bellamy asks, coming to stand next to her.

“Sometimes I think this door will open, and he’ll just be on the other side,” She says, her voice low.

Bellamy doesn’t respond. He knows there's nothing good enough to say. Instead he stands beside her and puts an arm around her shoulders.

“We lost so much,” she whispers, tilting her head down and angrily rubbing her face. “And for what? To end up back where we fucking started?”

Bellamy closes his eyes. He thinks of rowdy teenagers, drunk with newfound freedom, whooping and crowing around a roaring fire. Chilly air filling his lungs and youthful rebellion coursing hot through his veins. He thinks of blonde hair and a sharp chin and a smile he didn’t get to see nearly as much as he wanted to.

He can’t give Raven an answer. He just hugs her and pretends not to notice her crying until she awkwardly punches him in the shoulder and shuffles away without a word.  
  


**Day 102.**

" _Hot showers_. I’m tired of using a bucket. Hot water in general. Maybe hot algae goo would be better than room temperature algae goo. Uhhh, something with infrastructure."

“Do you even know what infrastructure _means_ , Murphy?”

“Doors? Definitely doors.”

" _What_ is he doing?"

Bellamy doesn't look up from the book in his hands. He had found an ancient, tattered copy of Moby Dick tucked into a drawer in an old science office and had gladly taken it. There was a painful lack of activities to do in space (unless you were Harper and Monty, who had one specific activity they were spending most of their time doing) and something— _anything_ —to read was a welcome respite. Everything was digitized a long time ago, so someone must have loved the book enough to keep a physical copy.

"Listing reasons why we should risk our lives to wipe ALIE out. Again. This time in alphabetical order."

Raven sighs.

"Not gonna happen."

"That's what I told him."

Murphy ignores them from his spot on the floor. He's sprawled on his back, tossing a baseball from hand to hand over his chest.

"The library files! You can read all of your stupid books. And probably our old arrest records, if you're interested."

"I was never arrested," Bellamy says.

"Me neither," Raven grins, sitting next to Bellamy on the bench he's pushed against the wall. Their knees knock together. Bellamy allows it.

"Well you can read _my_ old arrest record. Admire how pretty my mugshot was."

Bellamy's heart skips a little. He had forgotten about the photos. He had tacked the drawing of Clarke up beside his cot, but he's already worried that he's forgetting details. He knows he'll never forget the clear blue of her eyes or the mole above her lip or the jut of her jaw, but sometimes he can't recall the exact slope of her nose or the precise curve of her throat and it scares him. He never wants her to fade from his memory. He just wants to hold on to the perfect image of her forever.

He looks to Raven and sees something similar in her features. She's playing with the raven around her neck again.

But it's dangerous. He needs to think with his head.

"Are you volunteering, Murphy?" Bellamy asks.

Murphy scoffs.

"I already risked my life trying algae. Let someone else have a chance to be a hero."

Bellamy would have, a lifetime ago.

But for now he focuses on the faded words in front of him and the six other people on the Ring that are relying on him not doing anything stupid and it is enough.

"Music," Murphy says after a minute of silence. "It's too fucking quiet up here."

**Day 132.**

Bellamy quietly turns 24.

He doesn't expect anyone to remember, so he's pleasantly surprised when Harper hands him two books with a wide smile spread across her cheeks. One seems to be a biography of a politician from the 2040s, while the other is an erotic romance novel set in 1800s Scotland. The cover of the latter features a curvy redhead wrapped up in the arms of an unrealistically chiseled man with long blonde hair and Bellamy can't stop the grin from spreading across his face at how ridiculous it looks.

"It's all I could find—aside from some manuals on air vent maintenance that I gave to Raven," she says, almost apologetically. "I just thought anything was better than nothing, right?"

"No, I love it," Bellamy replies honestly. He had finished Moby Dick the week before and was already rereading it for something to do.

"I made something for you, too!" Monty says, handing Bellamy a small bottle filled with sickly green liquid.

"Is it...more algae?" Bellamy asks.

"Even better! You hold in your hands the very first batch of Monty Green's Mean Green Moonsheen."

"Monty Green's Mean Green Moonsheen?"

Monty nods enthusiastically.

"Okay, I'll bite. What is Monty Green's Mean Green Moonsheen?"

"It's a special batch of algae. For... _imbibing_."

"Are you telling me that you made _alcohol_?"

Monty smiles wide.

"I had to think of something! Did you really think we could make it up here with Murphy for _five years_ and _not_ get drunk?"

Bellamy laughs for the first time in what feels like forever. It's nice and free and louder than he remembers.

"Well," he says, uncorking the bottle. "Let’s hope it tastes better than it looks."

**Day 133.**

Bellamy wakes up with his head pounding and his mouth bone dry. Someone’s elbow is digging into his side, Raven is draped across his shins, and Murphy is snoring in his ear. Monty is curled into Harper, who’s curled against Emori, who’s got her head on Murphy’s stomach. Echo is board-straight on her back, a sliver of space between her and the rest of them. He vaguely remembers drinking and playing some games that involved drinking and doing some more drinking and ending up in a dog pile of giggles and tired bodies on the floor of the common room.

Bellamy doesn’t think he’s ever had this many people touching him at once. It’s pleasant, the feeling of togetherness that comes with the warmth of people he cares about pressed against him.

Still, he’s dying for water and Murphy is annoyingly loud, so he detangles himself from the heap of limbs and stumbles for the nearby table. He finds a half-empty cup of filtered water and thankfully gulps it down. He feels like he's never going to get the rotten swampy taste out of his mouth. He'll have to give Monty some notes for the next batch of Monty Green's Mean Green Moonsheen.

Through the window against the far wall, the bright point of the sun peeks over the burned Earth. Bellamy squints his eyes as the light causes his headache to splinter across his inner skull—

But then he sees a flash of green.

He drops the empty cup. The loud clatter on the metal tiles wakes up the group of sleeping teenagers behind him, but Bellamy doesn’t register their disgruntled cries. He strides towards the window, stepping over a stirring Echo, his eyes on the small green oasis in an ocean of sand. He's not sure, but it looks close to where they were. Close to Octavia. Close to home.

"Ugh, what the _fuck_ —" Murphy mumbles behind him.

"Blake, what're you—"

"Ah shit, _my head_ , Monty— _why_ —"

" _Look_ ," Bellamy says. The group behind him falls into a struck silence as they, too, see the lush, healthy spot of Earth.

The Ring slowly rotates around and the planet fades from view, giving way to the vast expanse of stars. They all disperse eventually, going off to nurse their hangovers in their own bunks. Bellamy stays where he is, however, his gaze turned towards the window but his mind far away. He still aches for what he's lost. For Octavia, for Jasper, for all of the kids who put their faith in him and died as a result, and for Clarke most of all. But seeing something so brilliant and beautiful in the midst of all the fire and destruction, he can't help but feel a tiny spark of hope.

**Day 166.**

The anniversary of the Dropship crashing to Earth sneaks up on them. It’s Monty who points it out while they’re all sitting around the common area, trying to drink their algae concoctions. Bellamy shares a glance with Murphy over his bowl. Beside him, Raven tenses up.

“Feels like we should do something, doesn’t it?” He asks. Harper reaches out to lace her fingers through his. 

Bellamy can’t believe it’s only been a year since he pulled a lever and saw the forest for the first time. Only a year since Octavia jumped down into the soil and screamed happily to the sky, sending a torrent of teenagers running into the trees. Only a year since he saw Clarke by the ladder, her hair pulled back and her eyes hard. Only a year since a hundred young lives were put in his hands.

How many were left of those original 100? He does a quick count in his head. Seven. Only seven alive. He closes his eyes and presses his palms against his eyelids. Ninety-three dead. Raven pushes her thigh against his. The smell of blood and death rises harsh in his memory, clinging tightly to the back of his sinuses. He swallows the last of his algae to combat it, focusing his gaze down towards the metal tabletop.

“Do you remember that first night, how Will and Hanna got into a big fight because their tents were too close to each other or something?” Harper says. “They were in each other’s faces, just screaming.”

“No, it was because Hanna thought Will had taken her sleeping bag,” Monty responds. “When really Mary Eng had taken it.”

Bellamy remembers. The steady drizzle soaking them all through while half the delinquents tried to set up makeshift tents and the other half ran wild. They were all feral that first night, drunk on fresh air and independence and youth in a way they would never be again. Will and Hanna had fought, alright. Their faces screwed up an inch away from each other, screaming so loudly that the entire camp could hear. It had ended when Hanna slapped Will across the face and stomped off to bunk with Kath, or maybe Lisa. Bellamy had suspected at the time that Hanna and Will were harboring an unspoken attraction for one another. They were always bickering and fighting; it always seemed like an excuse to be close to one another. If they were, they never got a chance to be together. Hanna died from the fever the Grounders snuck in through Murphy. Will made it to Mount Weather, but the mountain men killed him before Bellamy could pull the lever. Both dead, and it was all his fault.

The others have fallen silent. He wonders if they’re thinking of all the people they’ve lost, too.

“I have an idea,” Harper suddenly says, standing quickly. “Come on, follow me.”

She takes off out of the room and down the hall. Bellamy and Raven share a look before following, Murphy trailing behind. Emori and Echo stay in the common room. These were not their people. This is not their grief to feel.

Harper takes them to the thick metal door that separates the Ring from the Sky Box. When the other stations fell to Earth, the Sky Box was left behind. Bellamy assumed that because of its relatively small size, it wouldn’t have survived reentry. They keep it closed off because they’re unable to supply oxygen to the rest of the space without access to the mainframe. It’s just another thing that’s not worth the risk.

In her hand, Harper carries a knife. She presses a hand against the door with her eyes closed, as if in prayer, then she roughly scratches a name into the worn paint: _Will Park_. Beneath, she carves another: _Hanna Mair_. She keeps going, adding the names she can remember. _Meghan Pass_ , _James Harvey_ , _Mark Black_ ; the list keeps growing and growing until she drops her hand and shakes it out. Thirty-six names carved into the door. Thirty-six lives.

Monty takes the knife out of her hands and she steps back. He stares at the names of their friends, his eyes far away. Finally, he writes the first name. _Jasper Jordan_. He pauses, passing a thumb over the rough letters. Bellamy pictures the Jasper he knew before Mount Weather. The easy smile, the goofy goggles, the easy humor. Before the Earth chewed him up and spit him out and left him a wrecked shell. Monty inscribes twenty-two more names and steps back, passing the knife to Murphy.

For once in his life, Murphy doesn’t complain or snipe or grumble. He carves just ten names. He writes Connor and Myles last. His hand is shaking as he hands the knife to Raven. Raven sets her jaw and takes her place before the door. _Finn Collins_ comes first, as he always will for Raven. _Zoe Monroe_. Sixteen others who Bellamy thinks he remembers. She finally turns and hands him the knife, her eyes tired and shining. Only six left.

Bellamy starts with Charlotte. His first major mistake. He had given the wrong advice to the wrong child and people had died as a result. Sometimes in his nightmares he still sees her falling into darkness, her eyes wide with fear. Next is Dax. The first life Bellamy had ever taken. He can still remember the feeling of blood spilling over his fingers, can still hear that last gurgling breath. Bellamy knew he hadn’t had a choice. Dax was going to kill Clarke—to kill both of them. Dax and Charlotte were both flawed and damaged and violent, but they were both still Delinquents. He keeps going.

 _Bree_ , with her blonde hair and dark eyes and a smile that could cut glass. He had last seen her at the end of the world party, her lips pressed against his and her warm hands under his shirt. He hoped she died painlessly. 

_Roma_ , confident and strong, laughing by the fire. Pinned to a tree by a Grounder spear, blood running down her face. 

_Atom_ , with a thoughtful expression as he watched Octavia disappear around a corner. His eyes cloudy, begging to die because the pain was too great. Clarke smoothing his hair back and humming softly as she granted his request.

 _Wells_. Standing shocked with the gun in his hand and a dead panther at their feet. Always watching over Clarke, even when she didn’t want him to. He would have made a good leader. Instead, because of Bellamy, he bled out on the forest floor.

Bellamy pauses at the last blank space on the door. He can still picture the way Clark looked sitting at the Chancellor’s desk, tears spilling out of her eyes as she refused to write her own name on a different list of another hundred lives. He had scrawled her name beneath his in all caps and made her a promise.

_“If I’m on that list, you’re on that list.”_

He swallows the lump in his throat and writes her name carefully, smoothing out the curves to make sure it’s perfect.

When Bellamy’s done he steps back and they all look at the 93 lives in front of them. Harper is crying, her head resting against Monty’s shoulder. Murphy stands resolute with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. Raven inches towards Bellamy until her foot is pressed against his, though she keeps her arms crossed over her chest. Bellamy’s heart aches inside of him at all the friends they lost. That _he_ lost.

“In peace, may you leave this shore,” Harper begins, her voice thick. “In love, may you find the next.”

Monty joins in first, then the rest of them begin to speak in unison. Even Murphy, though his gaze remains pointed at the floor.

“Safe passage on your travels, until our final journey to the ground.”

Bellamy closes his eyes. He sees Clarke’s face. She smiles at him as the moonlight sparkles off her hair.

“May we meet again.”

**Day 179.**

The worst part is the not knowing. 

He doesn't _know_ how Clarke died. He knows she got the satellite dish to align with the Ark; it's why they're not all dead right now. But after that, it's all a question mark.

He dreams about it too often. In one nightmare she'll be running over uneven gravel as the death wave rushes behind her. He can clearly see the fear in her eyes as it overtakes her, turning her to ash. In another, she makes it back just as the rocket takes off and watches in horror as her friends leave her behind. As Bellamy leaves her behind.

In his worst dreams, though, she's there with him. She made it back in time and pressed her hand tightly into his as they took off into space. They walk the halls of the Ring, smiling without restraint, trading stories of Before and spending time quietly planning for the future. She’s unrestrained in ways she could never be on the ground, free of expectations and the weight of responsibility. At night she curls up next to him and moans softly as he presses kisses to the warm skin under her ear. She feels so solid, so perfect, so _real_ , and Bellamy always wakes up with a strange, sick mixture of guilt and grief roiling in his gut.

He should have told her. He should have fucking told her. What a _coward_. What a _waste_.

He remembers some moments with perfect clarity. Teaching Clarke to shoot in the dim light of the aid depot, her back against his chest and the scent of her hair in his nose. Seeing her burst through the crowd at Camp Jaha and throw herself into his arms and the overwhelming sense of _care_ that had flooded through him. The press of her lips against his cheek. The warmth of her neck as he buried his face into her shoulder.

He thinks of his friends here on the Ark. Of Monty and Harper in their bunk, and Emori and Murphy in theirs. Of Raven hunkered down in the Earth Monitoring Station and of Echo staring out of a window, still in awe of space. They need him, in their own ways. And he needs them, too.

But when he dreams of Clarke, he wakes knowing with a clear certainty that he should have stayed behind. Better to have died with her than for her to have died alone.

But he didn't. And she did. So now he's got to live.

**Day 206.**

Raven bursts into his room while Bellamy is half-asleep, her hair a messy nest around her shoulders. She slams the door loudly as Bellamy pushes himself up on his elbows.

“What’re you—?” Bellamy manages to say as Raven rounds on him, her eyes furious. She’s got the rumpled look of someone who has been violently awoken from sleep. She rips her jacket off and throws it onto the floor.

“I am _tired_ , Bellamy,” she growls.

“Okay…?” He responds, rubbing his eyes.

“Do you know where my room is?”

She sits down roughly on the edge of his bed, tearing at the laces on her boots.

“Down the—”

“ _Wrong_ ,” She pulls one of her boots off and hurls it down. It hits the wall with a loud _thud_. “My room is beside Harper and Monty’s. Do you know what Harper and Monty do _all night long_?”

“I really don’t—”

She throws her other boot beside its twin, the slam of rubber on metal reverberating through the small space.

“And do you know who else lives beside me?”

Bellamy knows better than to try and respond.

“ _Murphy and Emori_. And do you know what _they_ do? _All night long_?”

“So move rooms,” Bellamy responds. Raven looks like she’s going to murder him and he quickly regrets speaking.

“Do you think I haven’t thought of that? Do you think I’m an _idiot_?”

“Uh—”

“Only so many rooms have running water, _Bellamy_. Do you know where the only other room is with running water?”

“The one down the h—”

“The one next to _Echo_. Do you know what _Echo_ does all night long?”

Bellamy starts to laugh despite himself. Raven smacks him hard on his thigh and it just makes him laugh harder. She starts undoing the buckles of her brace, using a little more care than she had with her shoes.

“She _chants_! She’s made some weird tent in her room and she just sits inside of it chanting for _hours_! Do you know how difficult it is to sleep with someone _chanting_? It echoes down the hall. I can’t escape it.”

“So why are you _here_ , Raven?” Bellamy asks, though he thinks by now he can guess.

“ _You_ are going to scoot the fuck over and _I_ am going to sleep.”

She shoves him and he obliges, pressing his back against the wall.

“And before you even _think about it_ —”

“Which I _wasn’t_ —”

“I am here to _sleep_. So don’t get _any ideas_.”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

She hits him again and he snickers. Their time together at the camp had been rushed and awkward and they both know it. She had been trying to get over Finn and he had been trying to keep everyone alive and he still remembers the way she wouldn’t meet his eyes afterwards as she said it didn’t help.

Raven removes her brace and sets it gently on the floor before pushing her pants down her hips. She’s wearing black boy shorts underneath. Bellamy respectfully looks away as she undresses, his eyes falling on the portrait of Clarke he’s still got tacked beside his bed. He wishes suddenly that he had gotten the chance to sleep beside her. Wishes he could have seen the way she looked with her face relaxed and her sunspun hair spread across the pillows. That he could have kissed the hollow of her throat to wake her up and see her smile, just for him.

He jams his eyes shut and pushes away the thoughts as Raven climbs in next to him and rolls over onto her side. She’s got her back to him, but the cot is so small that his bare chest brushes against her if he takes too deep a breath.

“Where should I put my hands?” He asks. Raven huffs and reaches back to take one of his arms and drape it across her middle. He takes the other and pushes it under the pillows, settling in as she relaxes against him. She kicks her right leg around and he realizes she’s using it to nudge her paralyzed left leg into a different position.

“Do you need help?” He asks.

“ _No_ ,” she responds.

“Do you _want_ help?”

She sighs.

“You can’t help. It was a spine injury, sometimes the nerves hurt in my thigh. If I move it around it helps a little, but usually it fades out on its own.”

“Oh,” Bellamy responds lamely. He wants to offer assistance somehow, but he knows that Raven would have found a solution already if there was one.

“It’s better here. In space, I mean. Something with the gravity resistance, I’m sure.”

Bellamy nods, already beginning to grow tired again. Raven smells like electricity and sweet fruit (so unlike Clarke’s woodsmoke and wildflowers) and the warmth of someone beside him lulls him into a deep sleep.

They both sleep for eleven straight hours. In the morning they’ll agree it’s the best they’ve slept in months.

**Day 216.**

Raven starts bunking with him more often than not. They don’t talk about it. They just sleep.

(She doesn’t mention the mornings he wakes up rasping Clarke’s name. He doesn’t mention the times she shakes herself awake crying. They learn to hold each other in the middle of the night to try to keep the nightmares at bay and do not talk about it in the morning. She keeps coming back into his bed anyway.)

**Day 232.**

Monty makes another batch of Monty Green’s Mean Green Moonsheen to celebrate Harper’s birthday. It tastes less disgusting than the first, but seems twice as potent. It doesn’t take long for everyone to be sloppy and tipsy and falling over themselves.

Bellamy remembers the suffering the last hangover from Monty Green’s Mean Green Moonsheen had brought him, so he delegates himself to den mother this time around. He gets _just_ tipsy enough to enjoy himself, then spends the rest of the time rounding up the gaggle of drunk teenagers to make sure they don’t end up in too much pain in the morning. It feels nice to protect people in such a small way. To get them water and make sure they don’t collapse into a bench and to have that be enough.

The party winds down after a few hours. Bellamy makes sure that everyone makes it back to their rooms this time instead of in a collapsed heap. He escorts a giggling Harper and Monty to their bunk, leads Echo to her constructed tent, and drags a stumbling Murphy and Emori to their room. They’ve escaped their hangovers relatively unscathed, though he thinks he hears Murphy retching as he closes their door. When he returns to the common room for Raven, she’s gone. He frowns, but he has an idea of where she might be.

He finds her sitting on the floor, her back against the door to Mecha station and her raven necklace hanging from a protruding piece of metal beside her. Bellamy sits down next to her and she leans against him. Her cheeks are flushed with alcohol. He wraps his arms around her and rests his chin on the crown of her head. They’ve found more comfort in touch the last few weeks. A hand brushed against an arm, the nudge of a foot against a calf, a knocked elbow as they pass in the hall. 

“You miss her, don’t you?” Raven asks suddenly. Bellamy inhales sharply. Clarke’s ghost rises in his mind: her dirty face in the tunnels underneath Mount Weather, her bottom lip trembling and her sparkling eyes desperate.

_Together?_

_Together._

“Every day,” He whispers. Beneath him, Raven hiccups a sob.

“I miss him, too.”

She snakes her arms around his waist and presses her face into his chest. Bellamy rubs gentle circles into her shoulder and thinks about another girl pressed against his side under a tree a year ago, their faces bloody and his heart laid bare. He almost asked her to leave with him then, to just screw everyone and _go_. He should have asked her. He closes his eyes against the memory. He’s never going to shake her. He never wants to.

“Are you ready?” He says to Raven. She nods.

“Do you want me to carry you?” She’s drunk enough that trying to walk her down the corridor would be a challenge. Again, she nods.

Bellamy sweeps her up and heads for his room. His drunken glow is wearing off and the familiar cold is slipping back in.

He leaves the necklace behind. Raven never retrieves it, so it stays guarding the door into empty space.

**Day 240.**

Bellamy watches the Earth rotate slowly beneath him, the spot of green drifting slowly into view. He can barely see it through gray clouds rolling over the area. He wonders if the rain that falls burns like acid or if it’s clear. He misses the hot afternoons where the sky would finally break and send a deluge pouring down. He would stand outside in the storm, soaking himself through to the bone. It felt cleansing. Purifying. He would give anything to feel that again.

“Staring at it won’t get you there any sooner,” Emori says from behind him. He glances at her over his shoulder.

“I know. It’s just…”

He tries to find the words. Emori moves to stand next to him, sipping on a cup of water.

“It’s just that the world ended— _twice_ —and there’s still green,” He finishes lamely.

“She’s resilient, our Earth,” Emori responds.

“What was it like before we came down?” Bellamy asks impulsively. Emori mulls over the question.

“Savage,” she says finally. “There was always some needless war between the clans, some stupid insult that needed avenging, some useless death that was demanded. But...it was always beautiful. There was that, at least.”

Bellamy nods.

“I wish we had seen more beauty and less death.”

Emori hums, finishing her drink.

“ _Ste yuj._ _Oso na hon up graun op nodotaim._ ”

“I never learned Trigedasleng.”

“You should. Then you’d know what John is saying behind your back.”

Bellamy shoots her a sideways look.

“What’s Murphy saying about me?”

Emori just grins into her cup and walks away.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

He can hear her laughing all the way back to her room.

**Day 252.**

Bellamy is already asleep when Raven crawls under his blanket with him. He reaches out, still mostly dreaming. One of his hands circles around to rest on her ass and the other wraps around her shoulders and pulls her close. She moves with him, running her nose against his throat and resting a cold hand on his bare hip. Her good leg is thrown over his knees, her free hand coming up to thread her fingers in his hair. He was already half-hard, but as her tongue traces the vein in his neck his cock twitches and he moans low in his throat. He’s rapidly coming back to reality, the blood humming through his body and a warm glow pooling in his stomach. She feels him against her thigh and nips at his throat, shifting so she’s more or less straddling him.

“Wha’re we doin’?” Bellamy asks, his tongue thick with sleep and lust.

“ _Shhh_ ,” Raven replies. “Aren’t you tired of thinking all the time?”

He hums in response and she licks a line down his chest, pausing to circle his nipple before she continues down. Her hand slips underneath the waistband of his shorts and as her fingers wrap around his base, his hands shoot out to hold her shoulders. He’s wide awake now, his brain rapidly tripping over itself as he takes in his situation. Raven pauses, looking up at him with hooded eyes, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders. She’s already got her shirt off and her tits are pressed against his thighs and he can feel her heart beating against his skin and _fuck_ she feels so warm against him that he can’t really think straight anymore and—

“ _Raven_ ,” He grits out, his dick pulsing in her hand. He’s trying really hard to focus here, to use his head and make the correct decision that won’t hurt anyone. “What are we _doing_?”

She lazily pumps her hand once in response, a wicked smile spreading across her face. He can’t help the way his eyes flutter back or the sharp groan that squeezes out of his throat. When was the last time anyone had touched him like this? When was the last time he had _wanted_ anyone to?

“ _Fucking_ , obviously. I’m bored, Bellamy. Don’t you want to?”

And the thing is he really, really _does_. She feels so _good_ against him and it’s been so long since he let himself feel _good_. Maybe they’re doing it for the wrong reasons and maybe it’s a mistake but _fuck_ he just wants to feel good.

He releases her shoulders, falling back as she wraps her lips around him. He arches up into her wet mouth, her tongue swirling around the head of his dick before she dips and takes him almost all the way down.

Out of the corner of his eye he can see Clarke’s self-portrait, her penciled face serene. There’s a swoop in his heart, a tightness in his chest. He wishes—

 _No_. He squeezes his eyes shut and focuses on the girl with him, on the heat of her lips and the scrape of her nails on his stomach and the feel of her hair between his fingers as she bobs her head up and down. 

Raven pops up and shimmies forward to crash their lips together. They’re both sloppy and greedy and she ruts against him as her hands slide over the planes of his hips. He wraps his arms around her waist and spins her so she’s beneath him, taking care with her leg. She lets out a low whine as he sucks a mark against her collarbone, kicking off his shorts as he does. He palms her through her underwear, and a shiver of want travels up his spine as he feels how wet she is through the thin fabric.

He pushes her panties down, kissing her shoulder, her stomach, her hip, the inside of her thigh. He licks against her cunt just once before she hooks her hand around the back of his neck and impatiently pulls him back up. She’s smiling wide against him as he kisses her cheeks, her temple, the tip of her nose.

“ _Bellamy_ ,” she giggles against him. He kisses her full on the mouth and slides into her slowly. She gasps against him as he fills her up and Bellamy moans at the sound.

They fuck until they’re a spent tangle of sweaty limbs and loose grins. Until they’re too exhausted to think of grief or loss; until they can just be young and a little reckless for the first time in a very long time. They wind up on the floor in a pile of blankets and pillows and clothes, Bellamy spread out on his back with Raven draped across his chest, both panting as they look up at the ceiling.

“Did that help?” Bellamy asks, breathless. Raven laughs long and hard.

“Yeah, Blake. It really did.”

**Day 267.**

Bellamy starts working out again and immediately hates it.

If he’s honest with himself, he had given up on any strenuous activity for a while. His time on the ground had been spent sprinting and fighting and climbing and when he got into space he was just tired of it. He felt like a break.

But now—if he continues to be honest with himself—he feels like maybe he’s getting a little _too_ winded if he has to move quickly down the hall. And, even more honestly, he feels like he could definitely fuck for longer if he just got a little more in shape.

So he runs laps through the corridors until his legs protest and then he does a few more. He rigs a pull up bar, he does squats, he practices shadow boxing. His muscles ache and his lungs burn but honestly, he loves the feeling. It makes him feel more alive. More human.

He’s on his twenty-seventh lap of the day when he hears guttural shouts coming from the direction of Echo’s room. He pauses, startled by the sound. Echo generally kept to herself, hugging the walls and staying out of everyone’s way. She was helpful when asked, pulled her weight with menial tasks, gave opinions when they were needed. But she wasn’t their _friend_ , and she knew it.

He hears another yell. It sounds like just Echo in there. He pads forward silently, looking in through the open door.

Echo has a long rod in her hands, held in front of her like a sword. She’s made a dummy out of scraps of cloth and is thrusting the rod towards it in several practiced combat moves. It seems like he wasn’t the only one with ideas of staying fit. Behind her, all of the furniture that had been in the room is upended and shoved into the corners. Instead, in the middle of the space is a roughly constructed tent, just big enough for Echo to crouch in. There are trinkets hanging around, small mobiles of useless discs and shards of metal strung together with loose wire. The whole thing sags sadly in the middle.

He watches Echo train alone. She aims aggressively for the head and shoulders, ducking invisible arms as she arcs the rod forward and up. She spins for a hard hit, aiming for what would be the dummy’s ear—but she misses. The momentum pitches her forward and she falls to the ground, crashing into a table she’s set on it’s side and bouncing onto her tent. The whole left side collapses on her and she hollers from pain and surprise.

Bellamy takes a single step forward, then stops. He remembers Gina, her soft curls and warm eyes incinerated in an explosion because Echo played on his trust. Octavia, bloodied and furious after Echo stabbed her through the gut and left her for dead. His hands around Echo’s throat at the Conclave after she tried to kill his sister.

The sinister voice whispers through his mind again.

_It should have been her._

He turns and leaves as quietly as he came. Forgiveness might come in time, but not today.

**Day 282.**

He and Raven continue doing whatever it is they’re doing. They’re not _together_ like how Monty and Harper are _together_ , but the days are easier when he wakes up with his arm slung low over her hips and her leg thrown over his own. 

Today, he wakes first, sliding from a gloriously dreamless slumber to consciousness as easily as taking a deep breath. Raven is pressed against his side, her fingers twitching against his chest in her sleep. She always seems to be in motion. He does not move to wake her. It feels like he was starved for touch for so long, held back from any contact but violence. He wants to enjoy these close moments as much as he can.

He studies her while she dozes, tracing the taut lines of her arms and the sharp edges of her cheeks. He wonders if he could feel some way about her. If that would make it easier or harder up here. She’s beautiful, of course, and whip smart and fiery in a way that challenges him.

But his gaze drifts to the portrait of Clarke and the ache in his heart tells him that he doesn’t feel the same. He thinks maybe he never will about anyone again. What would he give to feel the press of her hand in his one more time? To hear his name fall from her lips? To feel the calming reassurance of her eyes on his? He thinks of Clarke’s voice on a recording that he keeps tucked safely under his cot. He’s been saving it for a bad day, when he knows he’ll break without the sound of her voice. He hasn’t gotten there yet, but he knows it’s coming.

Raven shifts in her sleep, muttering something that sounds like Finn’s name. It’s not perfect, this thing between them, but it’s _enough_. And that’s all he can really ask for.

**Day 301.**

Murphy and Emori have a massive fight that almost comes to blows. Bellamy can hear their screaming clearly from his spot in his room, along with everyone else on the Ring and surely the people down in the bunker, too. Half of their argument seems to be in Trig, but from what he can understand, Emori thinks Murphy is a callous asshole (which he can be) and Murphy thinks Emori should be more grateful (which just proves Emori’s point). It ends with Emori throwing Murphy’s things out into the hallway and declaring that it’s over between them before she slams the door so hard she dents the metal.

By then, Raven and Bellamy have drifted into the corridor to make sure things don’t resort to actual violence.

“Divide and conquer?” Raven asks beside him. He nods and she slides up to Emori’s door. From behind it, they can hear objects being tossed around. Raven knocks loudly.

“Emori, wanna talk?”

Emori slings the door open, her face twisted in fury. She grabs Raven by the arm and pulls her inside.

“I’m going to have an INTELLIGENT CONVERSATION for a change!” She declares to Murphy, slamming the door between them yet again. Bellamy can’t help the snort that follows.

“Yeah, real funny,” Murphy says, kicking at the pile of clothes at his feet. He looks paler than normal, his lips set into a thin line.

“Come on, grab your things. Give her some time and she’ll come around.”

Murphy abandons his clothes where they lay and follows Bellamy as he leads him back towards the common area.

“You think it was something I said?” Murphy drawls. He’s trying his hardest to look unaffected, but Bellamy can see the tenseness in his shoulders and the way his hands are shaking.

“One hundred percent,” Bellamy replies. “But what _did_ you say?”

Murphy sighs, collapsing onto the nearest bench and putting his head in his hands. Bellamy grabs two empty cups and fills them each with a swallow full of Monty Green’s Mean Green Moonsheen. He places one of the cups in front of Murphy before sitting across from him, taking the entire jar of Moonsheen with him.

“I don’t know. Something fucking stupid, obviously.”

Murphy picks the cup up and swirls it around. He frowns down at the green liquid but throws it back down his throat anyway. 

“Yeah, obviously. Now try again.”

Murphy slams the cup down with more force than necessary.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Look, we’re all we’ve got up here, and we’re going to be here for a long, long time. You can’t ignore this forever. There’s nowhere to hide.”

Bellamy pours another swallow into Murphy’s cup. He downs his own shot, the rotting moss flavor coating his tongue. He’s really never going to get used to the taste of algae, alcoholic or not.

“I think that’s the problem. It’s such close quarters. Down on the ground there was space.”

His gaze turns to Earth. They’re facing the Eastern Hemisphere now, the landscape reduced to a sandy wasteland.

“There was also all the wars, and the torture. Radiation. And don’t forget the murderous A.I.”

“Yeah, well, to be fair, we have the murderous A.I. up here, too.”

Bellamy chuckles.

“All I’m saying is that this time that we have, this peace we have...Don’t waste it. We did enough fighting on the ground.”

Murphy downs his second cup. He puts it down gentler than before.

“She had a brother, Otan. He took the no pain pill because he wanted to be in the City of Light. He died. Obviously.”

Bellamy nods at him to go on, pouring himself another drink.

“I...may have implied that it was stupid of him to take it. Well, more like selfish. I think my words were ‘self-centered jackass’?”

“You’re an idiot.”

“It was the truth!”

“You’re such an idiot.”

“Okay, maybe I could have had more _tact_. But I wasn’t wrong. The world sucks— _sucked_ , but _I_ never took the pill. And she only took it to find him—”

“What is _wrong_ with you?”

“Yeah, that’s what she said.”

Murphy grabs the jar of Moonsheen and pours a more generous serving for himself.

“I was just telling the truth,” he continues. “Fine, I could have said it better, but shouldn’t I be honest?”

Bellamy shakes his head.

“That wasn’t being honest. That was _you_ being a self-centered jackass. You don’t know why he took it and even if it _was_ for self-centered reasons, it’s not your place to pass judgement on him.”

Murphy huffs and takes another swig.

“She loved him, Murphy,” Bellamy says. “I’m sure she misses him. So yeah, you saying that he brought it on himself is an idiot move.”

Murphy raises his eyebrows and nods, silently conceding.

“Relationships are hard,” he says finally, pushing the Moonsheen away.

Bellamy has a brief flashback of Clarke with a gun pointed at him, tears falling down her cheeks. He blinks it away.

“So, what’s up with you and Raven?” Murphy asks. There’s a redness in his cheeks and a slight sparkle in his eyes.

“Nothing,” Bellamy says too quickly.

“Sure sounds like something. You’re not as quiet as you think you are.”

“Quieter than you.”

Murphy barks out a laugh, but he doesn’t ask anything further.

Bellamy lets him sleep on the floor of his room that night. Murphy stops to study the picture of Clarke by the bed. Bellamy silently dares him to say anything. He doesn’t, instead spreading out on the floor and quickly drifting off.

As the room fills with loud snores, Bellamy falls into a fitful sleep. He dreams of Octavia’s tear-stained face creased with rage as she lands blow after blow to his face.

He wakes up with his ears ringing and ghost pain tingling over his cheeks. He hopes Raven will be back in his bed soon.

**Day 304.**

Emori and Murphy finally make up. Bellamy is glad to finally have some quiet at night, though he finds that the nightmares don’t let up with Raven beside him.

Tonight, Clarke dies on the throne in Polis, black blood leaking out of her nose and mouth as her hand goes slack in his. Her body tilts off the chair and smacks into the ground, shattering into a broken heap of limbs and flesh. His hands are slicked in blood that he can’t rub off, red and black smearing together.

He wakes up shaking and does not find sleep for the next two days.

**Day 322.**

Bellamy is exhausted. His dreams lately are full of blood and pain and he’s got what feels like a permanent headache right behind his eyes. He can’t focus on anything, running is physically painful because of how much his head hurts, and—somehow, worst of all—Emori and Murphy are already fighting again so he’s had Murphy crashing on his floor for the last three nights.

He knows he won’t get any rest tonight, so he’s slowly pacing the familiar corridors instead. When he was a guard cadet, he would accompany the senior members on patrols as part of his training. He finds himself following those same paths he used to take, conducting the same sweeps of common areas he was taught years ago. Sometimes he half-expects Commander Shumway to emerge from around a corner and yell at him about his posture or his uniform or some other menial infraction, but Shumway is long-dead and long-gone like so many others that once called the Ark home.

He thinks of how different things would have been if Shumway hadn’t come to him with a gun and a promise that he could see his sister again in exchange for a single act of violence. If he hadn’t been so foolhardy and determined to give Octavia just one night of normalcy. If his mother hadn’t pressed a crying baby into his scrawny, six-year-old arms and called her his responsibility. He knows in his heart that plummeting down in the Dropship was Octavia’s best chance for survival. Maybe her _only_ chance. The truth is that they would all most likely be dead by now, lost during the Culling, or the exodus to Earth, or Praimfaya.

Bellamy circles Medical, his haggard eyes travelling over the bare tables and empty cabinets. He thinks sometimes about digging around again to try and find some relic of Clarke, but they’ve already stripped the place of everything useful. There’s nothing more to find. It’s comforting, though, to be in a space he knows that she spent so much time in. His eyes drift closed and he imagines her stocking shelves, her face clean and her hair swept behind her ears. Or she’s at the desk, typing notes into a tablet, her relaxed face lit with a serene glow.

Or she’s writhing on the ground, sores opening up on her face as the radiation ravages her skin and reduces her to ash.

His eyes shoot open, confronting him with an empty room. He starts walking again, trying to leave his ghosts behind. No matter how many steps he takes, he can’t seem to get the smell of woodsmoke and blood out of his nose.

**Day 346.**

Bellamy wakes up screaming, bolting upright in his bed and nearly sending Raven toppling to the floor. He looks wildly around his room, trying to convince himself that he’s not being blasted with disinfectant with a thick metal cuff around his neck and an antibiotic being launched into the back of his throat. He can still smell the harsh chemicals, can feel the coarse metal bristles of the brush they used to rub him raw, can see the faceless figures in hazmat suits as they shove him back and forth.

“Clarke or Octavia?” Raven mumbles, looking up at him from her position on her stomach. She’s accustomed to his nightmares by now, just as he is to hers. Bellamy tries to focus on the glow against her skin from the dim light, tries to ground himself back in the present instead of being pulled back into a mountain tomb. He takes in a few deep breaths, swallowing thickly.

“Mount Weather,” He says at last, the words coming out more like a gasp, or a sob. Raven hums, lowering her head onto her folded arms. Her fingers reach out to press against his hip. A slight comfort. It’s a test to see if he needs more. Bellamy leans backwards against the cool metal wall, still working on getting his breathing under control. He’s kicked the thin blanket off with his thrashing and it’s a crumpled heap at the bottom of the bed.

Bellamy squeezes his eyes closed and sees a child named Lovejoy with a book bag too large for his small frame. Sees dozens of prisoners in cages, Echo spitting in his face. Sees his large hand covering Clarke’s over a lever, tears in her eyes as they run out of options.

_Together?_

_Together._

Bellamy hunches forward, burying his head in his hands as he starts to cry in earnest. Beside him, Raven rises up and loops her arms loosely around him, pressing her cheek into his shoulder. In his mind’s eye he sees Maya’s ruined face as Jasper stares accusingly up at him. Hundreds of melted bodies hunched over tables and chairs and spilled onto the floor, parents wrapped around children and couples holding each other as the radiation destroyed their flesh and boiled them from the inside out.

He doesn’t deserve to be here, safe in a warm bed when so many people were dead by his hand. And for what? Survival? Most of his people were dead. Seven alive of the original 100. Ninety-nine of the original 2600 on the Ark. Twelve hundred left from the entire human race. It wasn’t worth it. _He_ wasn’t worth it.

Not without Clarke.

A sob rips through him.

He thinks he could have stood it if she was by his side. If it was Clarke holding him as the guilt swelled so badly that he felt like he was drowning, or walking next to him when he paced the halls because he couldn’t sleep. But she’s gone and he’s here and he wishes every day that he had stayed with her because living without her is unbearable.

He cries until his face is swollen and his eyes are dry and he’s too exhausted to keep going. He falls asleep with his head on Raven’s chest and her fingers running through his hair. He dreams of Clarke beside him instead, her hands trailing down his chest, leaving streaks of blood where her fingers meet his skin.

He wakes up tired and dehydrated. Raven is gone, but there’s a cup of water on the nightstand beside him. He drinks it thankfully and doesn’t leave his room for the rest of the day.

**Day 365.**

Bellamy sits across from the Dropship door, a half-empty jar of Monty Green’s Mean Green Moonsheen in his hand. He’s had a few shots so far and he’s feeling nice and toasty. He’s got the voice recorder turning over in his hands, wondering if it’s time to listen to it again. He promised himself that he would only listen to it in his darkest moments, but he’s feeling pretty fucking dark lately. He’s looking at Clarke’s name, scrawled among dozens of others. Just one life of many. Was it only a year ago today that he held her tightly in his arms as she cried into his shoulder? As he brushed her hair away from the cold sweat coating her forehead? As she looked desperately into his face and told him to hurry? As she died alone because he didn’t go after her?

He should have gone after her. It would have been better that way.

Someone flops to the ground beside him. He turns his head to find Monty, already reaching for the jar of Moonsheen. Bellamy hands it over with a nod of greeting.

“Harper’s doing the traveller’s prayer in the common room if you want to join. Echo and Emori have some Grounder rituals they want to do, too. You know, for remembrance.”

Bellamy stares at the door. He isn’t sure if he can be around people yet. He simply shakes his head. Monty lets them have a brief moment of silence together as his own gaze travels over the names. When he speaks next, his tone is low.

“Clarke was the bravest person I have ever met. I didn’t agree with everything she did, and she was so stubborn sometimes that I wanted to strangle her, but she always, _always_ wanted the best for her people. She didn’t just want us to survive, she wanted us to _live_. And she wanted it for you most of all.”

Bellamy looks up at him sharply, his eyes already welling up. Monty’s looking back at him with such an open expression on his face that Bellamy has to look away.

“We were her people, but you were her _person_. Everyone could see it. I think Miller even made bets on when you two would get together back in Arkadia.”

Bellamy chuckles, his cheeks wet.

“What I’m saying is, I know it’s hard. We all...lost people we cared about. We’re all broken in our own ways. But we made it here alive because of Clarke Griffin. The last thing she ever did was give you the only gift she could. She wanted you to live.”

“Monty, I...It’s too hard without her. I should have stayed. I shouldn’t have left her alone.”

Bellamy whispers the words. He doesn’t know if he’s ever said them out loud. 

“Without _you_ , we wouldn’t be here either. We need you. I hope you can see that.”

Monty touches his shoulder and stands, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“You know where we’ll be.”

He glances at the names, his eyes lingering on Jasper’s, before he turns and leaves. Bellamy watches him disappear around the curve before he picks up the voice recorder. He rewinds it, then hits play.

“— _ou should come to bed. You can finish in the morning._

“ _I’m almost done, Clarke. You go ahead._

“ _You’ve got to take care of yourself, too. You have people who rely on you. They would want you to be at your best.”_

Bellamy takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, rewinds it again, hits play.

“ _You’ve got to take care of yourself, too. You have people who rely on you. They would want you to be at your best._ ”

He can see her in his memory, her face slick with sweat but her eyes unwavering on his.

“ _People follow you. You inspire them, because of this._ ”

Her ghost puts a hand over his heart. It beats rapidly inside his chest.

“ _But the only way to make sure we survive is if you use this, too_.”

He could swear he feels her fingers at his temple, a gentle pressure that’s there and gone in an instant.

He opens his eyes again and stares at her name.

Monty was right. Clarke gave him a gift. She wanted him to live and he owed it to her to do so.

He stands shakily to his feet and wipes his face on his sleeve. He pockets the voice recorder, the weight comforting against his thigh. He takes a deep, steadying breath. The others need him. He walks down the hall towards the common room.

 _For Clarke_ , he thinks.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Wasn't it so weird how The 100 totally ended at Season 4 and they didn't air any other seasons after that? So weird, right guys? Right?
> 
> Anyway, thanks to wellsjahasghost (LaughingSenselessly) for betaing you are my ROCK girl.


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